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Growing up in the Yukon, Geoff Sicotte felt compelled to go to university to build a good life for himself and his family.

But after spending some time in class he realized something just didn't fit.

"It wasn't for me," says Sicotte. "I wanted to do something with my hands" and he especially liked the challenge of becoming an electrician.

Since the Yukon doesn't have an apprenticeship system of its own, the territory requires students to take the first three out of the four years there and complete the remainder in Alberta. Sicotte first started working in British Columbia to gain experience in residential construction, then moved back to the Yukon and did electrical work for an industrial company for his first three years as a registered apprentice. He moved on to a commercial company to round out his experience.

"It's good to know how to do everything," says Sicotte. "The more you know how to do, the more valuable you are."

As he completes his fourth year in Calgary at SAIT Polytechnic to meet the apprenticeship requirement, he's already secured a job in the Yukon as a systems control centre officer, where he'll be turning turbines on and off to supply power to different areas of the Yukon grid.

"When the economy gets really tight, guys who are just shuffling paper are not going to be important, whereas you're always going to need trades," says Sicotte. "The farther you go in the trades, the more you're going to be needed."

Apprenticeships in the skilled trades are essential to the success of every journeyperson - an individual who completes the combined education requirements and work experience - embarking on their often highly lucrative careers, says Jack Graham, academic chair of the electrical trades at SAIT.

"That relationship is huge because we rely on the employers to take part in the training, so it's a relationship between the apprentice, the educational institute and the employer," says Graham.

Across Canada, the curriculums - or at least the learning outcomes - are essentially the same for apprentices. The end result is a highly skilled tradesperson who is equally competent and who must abide by the same rules.

"In the end, it's pretty much the same darned thing: the electrical theory is the same and the Canadian Electrical Code is what we all abide by," says Graham.

In Ontario, for example, technical institutes tend to train electricians in more specialized fields - either residential, commercial or industrial - while in Alberta they tend to be trained as generalists, although grads often gravitate to one of those specializations.

A Red Seal tradesperson, one who meets a more experienced level of qualification and who writes an exam to prove it, can work interprovincially. While a journeyperson enjoys the same general skill level across Canada, different provinces sometimes require them to demonstrate their ability before gaining regional certification.

There are two main routes to pursue a trade as an apprentice and a third rapidly emerging option.

A traditional apprentice finds a job with a trades employer who agrees to take them on as a certified apprentice through the appropriate provincial qualifying body, complete with a contract between apprentice, employer and the school providing the theoretical and lab or shop training.

In SAIT's electrician apprentice program, for instance, the apprentice must take eight weeks of theory at school for each of the first three years; acquire 1,500 hours of on-the-job training; and attend 12 weeks of school in the fourth year.

The second option comprises "pre-employment" electrician programs designed to overcome barriers some students face in gaining an apprentice position. "The difficulty has been for apprentices trying to find jobs to get into the workforce to get indentured," says Graham.

In this type of program, students gain first-year apprentice skills, some basic hand skills of the trade and job site safety. "When they arrive on the job for the employer, they're all set and ready to go, which removes a lot of the encumbrance for the employers," he adds. "It's a fairly steep learning curve when somebody green walks onto your site." About 70 per cent of these students are hired as apprentices.

A third option is to enter a six-month electrical technician program designed to meet the needs of industrial employers, where students learn first-year residential and commercial theory, the required hand skills plus second-year industrial theory. This facilitates the process of getting an apprenticeship.

Sicotte knows the value of an apprenticeship first hand. He says it rounded out his experience and has been as essential to the progress of his career as the theoretical component of his education. "If you haven't seen it before, then you're just memorizing it for the test. But if you've seen it, you actually know what's going on," says Sicotte.

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